


The Price of Fate

by Mythril (fantacination)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, But it informs Season 8 events, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Greek Mythology - Freeform, I wrote this in one go and I'm still upset, M/M, Potential explanation for how weird S8 Shiro was being, TFW VLD was actually a madoka remix, season 7 fic, spoilers for S8 in author's notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 14:31:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17045462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fantacination/pseuds/Mythril
Summary: Who is Bob? Why does he test heroes? For what purpose ?And what was Shiro doing while the other paladins were proving they could be friends?Or:Shiro was tested by an interdimensional space deity and passed all too well, not knowing the price he would pay.





	The Price of Fate

**Author's Note:**

> Unbetaed 3 AM shortfic. Written on mobile.
> 
> Set during the Season 7 Gameshow Episode

 

“Where is everyone? Pidge?” Shiro asked sharply, looking around him. He stood on a vast dark plane, no light but for a single spotlight on him.

 

“Keith?” He asked, softly, even though he knew in his gut he wouldn't be here.

 

“Takashi Shirogane, ex Garrison Pilot and Inspirational Poster Boy, Champion and even Black Paladin! My, you _have_ been a busy boy! I haven't had a mortal like you in eons, simply brimming with potential!”

 

The voice hummed and a small alien man appeared on a hoverchair, whipping about him, “except for her and _him_ , but then, you knew that,” he said dismissively. He was short, green, and round cheeked, with large eyes and a buck toothed grin, looking nothing so much as a child’s plush toy, dressed in a cheap suit.

 

“Who are you?” Shiro asked, his tone a step beneath polite. “What am I doing here?”

 

“You don't recognize me? I’m Bob. As seen on TV!” He tilted his head quizzically, flashing him a wide, showman’s grin.

 

“And you, Takashi Shirogane, are here to make a choice.”

 

“What choice?” Shiro asked, a sinking feeling in his gut.

 

“Tell me, haven't you wondered why you haven't been getting any better?”

 

Shiro froze.

 

“Your body’s fine, picture of health, but you sleep too much and you can barely stand.”

 

“My...its taking some getting used to, being alive again.”

 

Bob propped his chin on his fisted hands, like a child. “Are you?”

 

“What do you mean?” Shiro calmed the edge of panic that rose in him at the question.

 

“You stand with one foot in death, Takashi Shirogane. Even cats only have nine lives. And yet here you are, despite this universe’s every attempt to kill you,” Bob said cheerfully. 

 

“That has made you very interesting. Not through your own efforts, wonderful as they are, but he has made much of you, hasn’t he, your Keith.”

 

“He’s,” Shiro began, and no longer knew how to complete it.

 

“But the universe has its ways of correcting itself. Inertia, time, flow and ebb. Your people call it fate. And you, my special snowflake, are a knot that must unravel.” Bob waved out a hand, drawing out a silken red cord. It was badly frayed and knotted several times. Golden scissors flashed at Bob’s hands.

 

The scissors open and he made to cut the cord, before sighing dramatically, a hair shy.

 

“You've got no soul for drama. I hate the stoics, bad for ratings. Your loud, lanky friend’s the only one with any hope.”

 

He tossed the cord and scissors aside, letting them melt into the darkness, and held Shiros eyes. Even in the dark they gleamed, opalescent and strange and other. “Look down.”

 

Shiro did. Beneath him, water rose, swift and violent, forcing him to back away. It was a river. Lethe, Shiro knew, instinctively, like the thread and The Fates.

 

“I love your little earthling minds, such rich texture to borrow,” Bob grinned. “It's not _easy_ trying to get myself understood in so many dimensions, you know.”

 

Bob turned and his suit morphed into a chiton. Something in his demanor changed, a shift in posture and aspect. Gone was the affable little man, replaced with something colder and more ancient. Gold scales appeared in one green hand and his voice was deeper, echoing across dimensions. “You know that all things must always come with its price, with every action a reaction, with every life, a death.”

 

He drew a hand in the river, the faces of the paladins, the only family he had left, appearing in the water’s ripples. Their brows were furrowed, bent over a gameshow tabl

 

“But what is a hero’s life worth? The weight of a world he saved? The blood of those he rescued? Or, perhaps, the light of another hero, like him?” The other paladins disappeared. Keith’s face remained. He was frowning, hunched over a drawing tablet, hair pulled up and a pacifier between his teeth. The scar from their battle scored his cheek. Keith turned a little, as though sensing his gaze.

 

“No,” Shiro shook his head, voice trembling violently.

 

“They’re losing, you know,” Bob said casually. “They're terrible teammates. Funny things, games, tying people's fates together, even temporarily, opens a window into their hearts. It's a shame they won't pass. Not as they are. But then, there will be other heroes.”

 

“What do you want? Why show this to me?”

 

“Do you want to save them?”

 

“More than anything.”

 

Bob leaned back, steepling the fingers on all four of his hands. “So, hero, choose.”

 

“I’ll do anything. I would die,” Shiro said, without hesitation, whispering a silent apology to Keith.

 

“Then drink.”

 

Shiro knelt, scooping water into the hollow of his remaining palm. It was dark and glossy, colder than ice and weightless as smoke. Its depth was unfathomable, even pooled in his hand. He thought of the others, Lance, Hunk, and Pidge anxiously talking of home. Allura and her headstrong heart. Keith, wonderful and beautiful, moving worlds in defiance.

 

Then, he brought it to his lips and drank.

 

Cold suffused his senses, like plunging into an antarctic sea. It tasted like nothing and like ash. Stars spilled down his throat, sharp edges and explosions. He gasped and retched and found himself staring at a glittering shard.

 

He picked it up. Inside was a picture of Keith, no, a memory. It was their first meal together, at the Garrison, the first real laugh he'd been able to tease out of him, sweet and awkward, a little unused but whole and full. A laugh that was as passionate and earnest as Keith himself. He had grown to love that laugh, even more rare and precious than his smiles.

 

The shard lay in his palm no longer than a second. Then, it dissolved into white mist, nothing more.

 

Suddenly, he was struck with a sense of loss, but knew not why or where it came from.

 

“What is this?” Shiro asked hoarsely. “Is this supposed to be death?”

 

“No, hero, it is your price. Not your life, but his, in you. Your fate, severed, so that he and you can exist within the bounds of the universe.”

 

“I don't understand,” shiro whispered. “This isn't what I meant.”

 

Bob smiled, eyes gentle but mouth sharp. “Nobody ever fully knows the choices that they make.”

 

“Please, not...not this,” he choked, coughing as two more crystals came out, as cold as the first, little slivers of tousled dark hair and violet eyes.

 

“You will live. They have made certain of that. But here your lives diverge. Slow and true.  Your strength, likewise, will weaken, over time, as your soul gathers here.”

 

Slowly, through the shock, Shiro began to understand the shape of the price he'd unwittingly paid. He had wanted to die with Keith’s name on his lips, and now that had been taken from him. What would happen, when none of his memories of him were left? Would he still be him? Would he be dead in spirit, a living shell like his clones had been?

 

“Why like this?” Why not reap him and be done with it?

 

“I love a good tragedy,” Bob said conversationally. “ I am a little sorry, you know, in a way. But my charge is to safeguard destiny and I have to make sure nothing like this happens again.”

 

He touched Shiro’s head. “Don't worry, I'll be lenient on your friends. This will be my gift to you, for being such a good hero,” he said indulgently. “Forget.”

 

The world swam away from him, the plane, the river, the god. When he woke up he was in Green’s cockpit, shivering.

 

It was so cold, even through the thermally adjusted black paladin suit. He wondered if Green’s own heating had broken down. He opened his mouth to ask Pidge, sitting in the pilot’s seat, only for a flurry of excited exclamations to erupt from the paladins.

 

“Bob?” Coran asked, dissolving into an enthusiastic lecture on space mythos.

 

Shiro listened, quiet, his good hand on his numbing chest. For a moment, it hurt, as though bleeding from an unseen cut. Then, it was gone, leaving only a deep sense of cold, as though frozen.

 

- _fin_ -

 

**Author's Note:**

> For 3 days post S8 I decided I wouldn't write a fix-it and I wouldn't write shiro as sheith ever again (famous last words, but my heart's still not in it) and even though I had already had plans for the harem fic being a reality nexus and for the keitor houseguest one to be unrequited sheith, I never actually thought they'd erase sheith as an intimate platonic relationship to feed a last minute and hamfisted PR move. 
> 
> And then, of course, I was so angry at all the inconsistencies that I needed something to make sense. 
> 
> And then I woke up, upset, scrolled through my TL full of feels, and cried as a scene blossomed in my head. 
> 
> The 3 AM plotbunny, god of agonized writers, had descended.


End file.
